What’s An Image At Getty Worth?

Posted on 3/5/2019 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (3)

Yesterday, I received a call from a travel photographer who recently started contributing his work to Getty Images. He has about 200 images from various locations around the world in the collection. He just received a sales report for 3 Premium Access sales, each for royalties of under $1.00. He wanted to know who he could contact at Getty about such ridiculously low royalties.

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Comments

Peter Dazeley Posted Mar 6, 2019
Just had my January Getty statement in. One image in Premium Access earned me $0.01. A new low! Welcome to the world of stock photography. One imagines that it must cost more to administrate a sale like this, than it makes. This is what an image is worth to a customer in 2019.

Tibor Bognar Posted Mar 9, 2019
Of course! Getty is considered the number one agency in the world, but they sell at microstock prices - or lower! The glory days of stock photography are over and will never come back. No price is too low, as Jim says. I've done better than Peter: on a sales report one of my images was listed as sold for $0.00! Getty carefully calculated my share: $0.00. Our friend the new contributor should keep his dayjob, or look for one...

Brian Smale Posted Mar 16, 2019
It amazes me that anyone is actually surprised by these low rates. You can't say that you weren't warned. The Getty contract was terrible from day one. We all knew it. Twenty-plus years ago, hundreds of us in EP/ASMP/APA all shouted from the rooftops as loud as we could "The contract sucks... don't sign it!"... but what did photographers do?... what they always do... act in their own worst interest. Many did well at first, and a few might still do ok. But it doesn't take a genius to see how this is going to end. And now, Getty photographers are stuck with an agency that they can't even pull their images from for years.
About 18 years ago, my agencies (Onyx > Outline) got absorbed into Corbis. In the early days, Corbis did pretty well for me, but gradually I saw my payments dwindle. Finally I got a statement with a sale for $15 (and I was in the 'double rate' catagory!), and I realized that it was time to leave, and I moved all my stock in to Photoshelter. (I was very lucky that my editor didn't make me leave images there until the end of my contract). I know PS isn't the right choice for everyone, but for me it has worked out. I'm sure this isn't the best example for a comparison, but just think about this: my last sale a couple weeks ago was for a 3/4 page photo in a small circulation alumni mag. Final usage fee was 436.00, which netted me about 375 after PS and credit card fees. Getty would need to make literally thousands of sales of Pete's Premium image in order to net him the same fee. It doesn't matter to Getty whether they sell one image for a thousand dollars, or a thousand images for a dollar each. And you can easily see which path they are on.
No boutique agency is likely going to do any better for you in the long run either. They all end up going bust, or swallowed up by Getty. If you can put new images in to Photoshelter, and start taking control of your own sales, I highly recommend it. End of rant. (for now!). - b

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